One of the biggest gifting hurdles is that online shopping is just not optimized for purchasing for others. While shoppers buying for themselves know their size, preferred color or shipping address, these simple questions create significant roadblocks when trying to buy for someone else, resulting in material loss of business for retailers. This loss is caused by consumers being forced to compromise by shopping at alternative stores, purchasing different products or buying gift cards that don't have that personal touch. Or they simply end up buying the wrong gift, resulting in significant returns and exchanges.

Today, Loop Commerce removes these obstacles with the launch of a SaaS-based gifting solution for retailers that easily integrates into their stores, while providing their customers with a simple way for thoughtful and personalized gift giving - all while ensuring that the recipient gets the perfect gift. Loop Commerce is also announcing that it has raised more than $7 million in Series A funding.

The Loop Commerce platform is built for large scale, with ease of integration into the store, including payment, checkout and order-management systems, enabling retailers to quickly drive growth and generate new revenues in time for the holiday season. Loop Commerce opens up the huge gifting market to merchants who have not yet implemented gifting in their stores, as well as removing the commercial obstacles for merchants who have gifting options but are faced with abandoned shopping carts, a large number of returns and only a fraction of their inventory even available for gifting.

Loop Commerce investors include some of the most influential leaders in technology and e-commerce, including Mark Carges, CTO of eBay; Don Katz, Founder and CEO at Audible and EVP at Amazon; Chuck Geiger, CTO at Chegg and former CTO at PayPal; Roy Rubin, Founder of Magento; Michael Scharff, previously SVP Retail at Toys 'R' Us; Novel TMT, which is backed by the owner of the likes of Tommy Hilfiger and Michael Kors; and other prominent industry stakeholders.

Loop Commerce's seed funding of $1 million was led by Oren Zeev, a prominent Silicon Valley investor and backer of industry innovators and leaders such as Audible, Chegg and Houzz. Oren also participated in the Series A round.

'Loop Commerce significantly increases revenue for retailers by making their store a destination for gift giving,' said Loop Commerce CEO and co-founder Roy Erez, an entrepreneur and former VC with more than 15 years experience in the technology industry. 'Loop Commerce takes the complexities out of gifting for consumers and the inefficiency out of gifting for retailers, while addressing major e-commerce challenges, such as new customer acquisition, cart abandonment, driving new sales, exchange and returns, and user and product data analysis.'

Loop Commerce offers the most effective way for merchants to transform the gift-giving experience and finally make inroads into the widely untapped $50 billion online gift purchasing market. Loop Commerce enables buyers to select from a retailer's entire inventory and everything is done under the retailer's brand and within their site. This helps to build brand and increase loyalty, as well as delivering two consumers for every transaction - the buyer and the recipient. Loop Commerce also provides the ability to up-sell and cross-sell to these consumers.

'Integrating with online retailers is an incredible challenge, especially when factoring in scale, accommodating for payments, and keeping the experience seamless,' said Chuck Geiger, CTO at Chegg and former CTO at PayPal. 'Loop has been smartly built, from the ground up, to support such large-volume transactions.'

'Loop Commerce was built with retailers in mind, driving growth through new business and significantly increasing consumer choice and satisfaction,' said Michael Scharff, a former SVP Retail for Toys 'R' Us. ' That's why I'm excited to be an investor in the company.'

'Gifting is an ancient social gesture deeply ingrained in human culture,' said Don Katz, Founder and CEO at Audible and EVP at Amazon. 'Loop Commerce manages to deliver an emotional gifting experience that's also skillfully executed to meet large retailer needs.'

'I've been personally involved with Loop Commerce and co-founders Roy Erez and Alex Sirota since day one,' said Magento Founder and CEO Roy Rubin. 'And I've eagerly watched them work on tackling what has long been a huge problem: the challenges of gifting. What they've done is create something that is commercially rewarding for retailers, as well as establishing a more satisfying gift-giving experience for givers and recipients.'

About Loop Commerce
Loop Commerce was founded in 2012 by Roy Erez and Alex Sirota to simplify gift giving by making everything giftable.
Loop Commerce has developed a robust, turnkey, SaaS-based solution that fully integrates with a retailer's store, including payment and order management systems. Loop Commerce allows retailers to make every available product giftable, without buyers having to worry about product specifics, such as size, color, style or delivery preference. This enables retailers to establish direct relationships with recipients, ensuring that the right product is sent to the consumer in the right way, while also introducing cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

Loop Commerce is an industry-backed company headquartered in Silicon Valley. Loop Commerce has raised more than $8 million since inception from major financial investors and high-profile industry leaders.